Following the Energy of Desire
Seguir la energía del deseo
A question about discerning between genuine creative impulse and conditioned resistance, and how to tell whether difficulty in pursuing a project signals growth or a wrong direction.
Following the Energy of Desire
A question about discerning between genuine creative impulse and conditioned resistance, and how to tell whether difficulty in pursuing a project signals growth or a wrong direction.
I'm not even sure what it is that I would want, but there's just the feeling of being held back from it.
One thing to explore is to wonder: if your life ended in a month, what would you want to do? Really contemplate it. That's what happens with people who have terminal illnesses. They become suddenly either very depressed and very much in denial, or they become awake. You only have those two options. It becomes very polarized because you don't have much room to pretend.
The vitality beneath desire
Once we start tapping into that energy, it becomes a movement, a vitality and a love for life. It is creative and always new. It could be "call my father," or "sit at the piano," or "go to work." But it is a vitality, and the more you dive into it, the more it will develop all of your potential.
Maybe that vulnerability is telling. If there's resistance and the feeling is more dead, stagnant, or hard rather than vulnerable, is that a sign of something different?
If it feels hard, dead, and stagnant, it's likely conditioning. But at some point in a conversation like this, it becomes hard to keep talking in the abstract. It becomes more useful to speak specifically. For example, if you feel like looking into it: what do you want? What's coming up?
The example I was thinking of was that yesterday I did a presentation about an art project I'm involved in. It's quite difficult for me to do things like that, not because of the project itself, but because of asking for help and the "selling" part. There was fear and vulnerability there. Some of it, connected to the project, had an energy to it. But some of it felt like I was forcing myself into a position, going in a direction that isn't the right way. So there's a push and pull.
Discerning what we don't want
There's a whole aspect of learning what we don't want, because that's part of how we make room and energy for what we do want. But that also requires a lot of discernment, because there's an immature kind of not-wanting. There's a tantrum quality to it: "I don't want to have to work, I don't want to have to do this or that." That often happens when we lose touch with what we do want, because when we are in touch with it, the things that are required but that we don't feel like doing become easier.
For example, if I'm very in touch with the desire to write music, then sitting at the instrument and going through some tedious processes becomes more clearly something I want to do. But if I'm just putting myself in that situation without being in touch with that deeper energy of desire, it will be very painful. It will feel pointless, and I would likely stop doing it because there won't be enough energy.
It's also common to end up doing things that we really don't want to do. So: the art project is something you want to do and still want to do?
Yes. It's very alive in me.
And is the presentation something that's a requirement, a part of the process? Something you decide, feel, and choose as "yes, this is what I want to do, this is part of the process"? Or is it maybe expendable?
I think it's expendable. What you described helps with that discernment. The energy is in the project itself. After the presentation I could see where that energy hit and where it fell flat. It's a difficult learning, but it is a way of learning: to follow that energy. And it feels so much better to do that, and to write about the project, and to put in the energy the project actually needs from me.
Working through resistance versus draining yourself
Follow the energy. Follow the expansion. Often, when we do something that is in service of a deeper desire, resistance comes up. For example, I might feel resistance to doing the craft, the tedious process. The mind will say, "I don't want to do this. This isn't necessary. I shouldn't have to do this." But often, if you do it and work through the resistance and the contraction, you will experience a release of energy. There will be a vitality afterward.
The things we do that we don't really want to do, the things not coming from that universal desire, will feel draining. And it won't be the kind of draining where you're tired after a long day of work but satisfied. It will be a deadening. That's something to really listen to.
In a sense, the question is not only "what does the universe want to do?" but also "what does the universe not want to do?" The key distinction is between the universe not wanting and the ego not wanting. The ego doesn't want to do anything. It wants everything for free.